For 3rd straight time, Earth sets hottest year record

By Seth Borenstein

Updated 4:54 pm, Wednesday, January 18, 2017

WASHINGTON — Earth sizzled to a third-straight record hot year in 2016, government scientists said Wednesday. They mostly blame man-made global warming with help from a natural El Niño, which has since disappeared.

Records go back to 1880. This is the fifth time in a dozen years that the globe has set a new annual heat record. Records have been set in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010 and 2005.

The World Meteorological Organization and other international weather monitoring groups agreed that 2016 was a record, with the international weather agency chief Petteri Taalas saying “temperatures only tell part of the story” of extreme warming.

“This is clearly a record,” NASA’s Schmidt said. “We are now no longer only looking at something that only scientists can see, but is apparent to people in our daily lives.”